Let me first off stress that I am not suggesting anyone should go digging through the Citizen Patriot's dumpsters tonight.

But, if one were to do such a thing, one would find a treasure trove of discarded press kits, movie stills, and photos of celebrities and long-forgotten has-beens.

As part of the restructuring of the newsroom following the recent buyouts, we are moving various departments to new locations and consolidating. In order for this to happen, we first have to throw out a bunch of junk.

My job was to clear out the old features and entertainment cabinets, which I discovered still had all the old photos of actors and musicians that record labels and movie studios used to mail out. Glossies, I believe they were called.

Today, of course, publicity photos are sent by request electronically, assuming that you can locate contact information for the studio or label's publicity department, which is no easy task.

Once upon a time, however, companies like Disney, CBS and Capitol Records actually cared about whether their products got coverage from newspapers in towns like Jackson, and they mailed photographs to promote their TV shows, movies and albums. Newspapers dutifully filed these photos in alphabetized folders so that, should there ever be an important news item about Static-X that required a photo, everyone knew exactly where to find it. This is the stash upon which I stumbled.

Let me try to impress upon you the size of this stash. It stretched back at least to 1979, because I found headshots of the Not Ready for Primetime Players that NBC sent out during "Saturday Night Live's" fourth season. There was a plastic sheet with 19 slides from Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor." It included at least three different group shots of Spyro Gyra.

It was kind of sad tossing out hundreds of pounds worth of photos. I thought about all the time and effort that had gone into creating this pile. I thought about the poor hacks who spent hours capturing images from "Beavis and Butt-head Do America," converting them to black and white, printing them on glossy paper, stuffing them in specially designed paper bags and mailing them to papers across America.

I rescued exactly two photos from the trash: Bill Murray's 1979 SNL photo and a photo of Wilco circa 1995 from Reprise Records. They are now affixed to the wall of my cubicle with push pins.

Before the rest got thrown out, though, I scanned a few so I could make fun of them. Enjoy:

The text below the photo reads, "John Lequizamo stars as Pestario 'Pest' Vargas, an appealing scam-artist whose street-wise charm and ability to transform himself propel him into and out of a wild series of improbably adventures, in TriStar Pictures and The Buble Factory presentation 'The Pest.'"

How could this movie possibly have slipped so far from the cultural consciousness? It sounds absolutely delightful!

ABC Photography Department

Kojak: "Has anyone seen my sunglasses?"

ABC Photography Department

Kojak: "Never mind!"

Empire Studio

Remember when country bands could get away with dressing like this? Neither do I.

According to Wikipedia, Sawyer Brown got their contract with Capitol Records by winning Star Search.